Mercedes robot cabs coming to San Jose next year

1of2Daimler and Bosch plan to use autonomous Mercedes-Benz S-class vehicles in the project.Photo: Daimler/Bosch

2of2Daimler and Bosch plan to collaborate on a 2019 pilot ride-hailing service in San Jose using autonomous Mercedes-Benz S-class vehicles.Photo: Daimler/Bosch

Robot Mercedes taxis will cruise through downtown San Jose late next year, according to carmaker Daimler and auto-parts supplier Bosch, which said they have an agreement with the city to test an autonomous ride-hailing service there.

Self-driving Mercedes-Benz S-Class vehicles will offer free rides to selected members of the public in the San Carlos/Stevens Creek corridor between downtown and west San Jose, the companies said.

“We want to learn about customer behavior, transportation needs, how things go together, what people expect,” said Michael Hafner, Daimler’s head of automated driving. “We think about the whole journey through the eyes of a customer and what he or she wants to use the time for, what they want for entertainment, user interface and interactions.”

While the pilot project will use Daimler’s existing Mercedes modified for self-driving, the automaker plans to manufacture Mercedes specifically designed for autonomy in the near future.

“The final product will not necessarily have a steering wheel” or manual controls, Hafner said. Using luxury Mercedes, he said, will be a competitive advantage.

Related Stories

Daimler and Bosch plan to start the San Jose project with “a selected user group” of riders, who will summon on-demand rides using an app, Daimler spokeswoman Anja Weinert said. She didn’t specify how the companies will select the initial riders but said the city will participate in that process.

Most of the larger players rushing to develop autonomous cars have focused on robot taxi services as their road to making money.

Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, has offered autonomous ride-hailing to selected users in Arizona for more than a year and said it will soon offer a similar service in the Bay Area. It has recently begun charging for some of the Arizona rides and plans further commercialization this year. It predicts it will give 1 million robot taxi rides a day by 2020.

General Motors has consistently said it will have fleets of autonomous ride-hailing cars next year, without specifying a location, although many observers expect it to start in San Francisco or Detroit. Technology developed by GM’s Cruise self-driving unit, which is based in San Francisco, will enable it to mass-produce autonomous cars without manual controls next year, GM said.

Hafner rejected the hypothesis that Waymo and GM are outpacing Daimler on the road to commercialization.

“We are not thinking we are behind,” he said. “We might not have that same brute-force approach in terms of vehicles in many locations, but we are more focused on the safety, system architecture and analytics.”

Daimler will be able to deploy larger fleets once it has data from the pilot project, he said.

In 2014, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz research and development group, with offices in Sunnyvale, was among the first companies to receive permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test autonomous cars here. It currently has permits for five autonomous vehicles and 36 test drivers, DMV records show.

Weinert said the companies have not yet determined how many vehicles will be part of the pilot program or how many rides they will give.

Two safety drivers will be aboard for all rides, both to supervise the cars’ behavior and “to observe reactions and behavior of other road users toward our vehicles,” Weinert said.

“The pilot project is an opportunity to explore how autonomous vehicles can help us better meet future transportation needs,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement.

Carolyn Said covers the on-demand economy (new marketplaces such as Uber, TaskRabbit and Airbnb that let people rent their time, goods and services), the impacts of automation and AI on labor, and the world of autonomous vehicles. Previously she covered the housing market and foreclosure crisis, winning awards for stories that shed light on the human impact of sweeping economic trends. As a business reporter at The Chronicle since 1997, she also has covered the dot-com rise and fall, the California energy crisis, the corporate malfeasance scandals, and the fallout from economic downturns.